Regular readers will recall that three British Library manuscripts went on loan to the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, for an exhibition entitled Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350. We are delighted to announce that the same works have been loaned to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (the AGO), as part of its exhibition Revealing the Early Renaissance: Stories and Secrets in Florentine Art. This exhibition opened on 16 March, and runs until 16 June 2013. As Matthew Teitelbaum, director and CEO of the AGO, remarks, 'This exhibition and the programming around it allow us to look at one of the most crucial periods in Western art history with fresh eyes. We invite visitors to view these seminal works through a contemporary lens, relating the issues of Florentine society at the dawn of the Renaissance to those of our modern lives.'

In Toronto, visitors will see The Cross on a Papal Throne and Christ Standing with a Banner (London, British LIbrary, MS Royal 6 E IX, ff. 8v-9r).

The fabulous Carmina regia, an address by the city of Prato to Robert of Anjou (Royal MS 6 E IX), is featured in the exhibition, but with a different image than that previously seen in Los Angeles and  London (as part of the highly successful Royal Manuscripts exhibition held last year: see Praying to the King, our original post on the Carmina). The text may perhaps be attributed to Convenevole da Prato (c. 1270/75-1338), a professor of grammar and rhetoric most famous as Petrarch's teacher. In the address, the city of Prato beseeches the king to unite the Italian peninsula under his rule and restore the papacy to Rome. This was likely the presentation copy of the text, given to Robert of Anjou on behalf of the city of Prato.

The Carmina regia is now also available to be viewed in full on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts website (see here).

The two manuscript leaves that were in the Getty exhibition are also transferring to Toronto. These were both originally part of a single manuscript: Additional 18196, f. 1, with scenes from the life of St Agnes, and Additional 35254B, with part of a hymn to St Michael. These leaves have been reunited in the exhibition with others from the same book of songs (or laudario) made for the Compagnia di Sant'Agnese, which was based at the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. 

All three loaned works were painted by Pacino di Buonaguida, who was active in Florence in the first half of the 14th century. Only one signed work of his is known: an altarpiece in the Accademia Gallery in Florence. Other paintings and manuscripts are ascribed to him based on stylistic similarities to this work.